The future of auditing: the debate in the UK

Abstract

Upon its creation in 1991, the UK's Auditing Practices Board (APB) debated the future of financial statement auditing, leading to a succession of APB publications in 1992, 1994 and 1996. A significant theme of these publications focused on the need for an audit environment in which auditing can be sustained as a professional judgement, in the face of pressures tending to subvert the audit into a process of compliance with rules. This paper articulates an ‘accountability model’ of the audit, developed as a consequence of APB's debate and underpinning many of the policy implications of the APB papers. This model is articulated in terms of the concepts of lateral and hierarchical accountability. The fear that judgement would be displaced from auditing has for the moment proved groundless given the recent introduction of new judgemental audit methodologies based on an assessment of business risks. Nevertheless, it is argued that the underlying accountability model and its implied imbalance between the hierarchical and lateral accountabilities of the audit engagement partner, still stands.

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